2015 Criterion Forum Awards

[movielocke]

Regarding the eclipse sets, it's an exceptionally strong year for the series, the ozu set is top three for the series, all three films are fantastic, the scores are the amongst the best they've ever commissioned, mainline or eclipse; this set is on par with Shimizu and Bernard as the best thing they've ever done. The Duvivier set is a beautifully curated story of the director and his partnership with Baur; it charts a nice arc through the shifting and maturing styles of the thirties and ends on a truly artful note that foreshadows his first Hollywood work, it's an incredibly rich set for the series. And the varda set is visually stunning, with the best transfers in the entire eclipse line at times it feels like I was watching a bluray. The material is fascinating and unique and although "lions love" is not nearly as good as the rest of the set, it's still fascinating, and overall another great outing for eclipse this year.

[DeprongMori]

I have an oddball question: Are we only considering new bonus films as eligible bonus films for the 2015 awards?

Because Pennebaker's "Daybreak Express", which appears in 1080p on the Dont Look Back release, had previously appeared in SD as a bonus on Neame's The Horse's Mouth since it had accompanied the original theatrical release of that film.

I'll bet this is a situation we've never run into before and are unlikely to run into again.

[Buttery Jeb]

I'll bet this is a situation we've never run into before and are unlikely to run into again.

Technically, we also have Werner Herzog Eats his Shoe this year, which was originally included in the Burden of Dream disc, then got included again in the Gates of Heaven/Vernon, Florida set.

[swo17]

I believe we can vote now? (My copy of Burroughs turned up over the weekend and I've already watched it.)

Best Release
1. My Winnipeg
2. The Apu Trilogy
3. Julien Duvivier in the Thirties
4. Dont Look Back
5. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

Best Eclipse Release
Julien Duvivier in the Thirties

Best Modern Release
Moonrise Kingdom

Best Commentary
Kwaidan

Best Booklet
Dont Look Back

Best Bonus Film
Only Dream Things

Best Other Supplement
Cine-essays on My Winnipeg

Best Reissue
The Honeymoon Killers

Best Blu-ray Upgrade
My Dinner with André

Best Discovery
Julien Duvivier in the Thirties

Best Cover


Worst Cover


Best Packaging
Mulholland Dr.

Most Disappointing
Mulholland Dr. I guess this is standing in for all of the releases with compression issues. But also, whither The Cowboy and the Frenchman?

Best Thread
1980-1984: Favorite Records (obscure or otherwise...)

Forum Member of the Year
mizoguchi5354

Best Non-Criterion Releases
Bill Morrison: Selected Works (BFI)
Carl Theodor Dreyer Collection (BFI)
Dragon's Return (Second Run)
Dziga Vertov: Newly-Restored Works (Flicker Alley)
Guy Sherwin: Short Film Series (Lux)
How to Be Eccentric: The Essential Richard Massingham (BFI)
Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism (Arrow)
Masterworks of American Avant-Garde Experimental Film (Flicker Alley)
Pattes blanches (Gaumont)
Shoah and 4 Films After Shoah (Masters of Cinema)

[tenia]

Best release :
Day for Night
Here Is Your Life
Blind Chance
Valerie and Her Weeks of Wonder
Dont Look Back

Best Eclipse :
Agnes Varda in California

Best Modern Film :
None

Best commentary :
I don’t listen to them anymore (because of a lack of time) so N/A

Best bonus film :
Two Days, One Night - When Léon M.'s Boat Went Down the Meuse for the First Time

Best booklet :
Harder and harder every year since Criterion is shortening them but I kind of liked the Moonrise Kingdom one

Best on-disc non-commentary extra :
N/A

Best Reissue :
Cries and Whispers
On the other end, Sword of Doom was an extremely dispensable one looking at the master Criterion was reusing

Best upgrade :
An Autumn Afternoon

Best discovery :
I actually never saw it before but hugely enjoyed Day for Night

Best cover :
Not many exceptional covers this year, but I liked the style of Day for Night

Worst cover :
So many great contenders ! The Apu Trilogy, A Special Day, Two Days Two Nights, Dressed to Kill, The Fisher King, The Rose, Limelight, Odd Man Out, Le silence de la mer, Watership Down are all using pretty meh covers, either what looks like lazy screencaps from the movie or simple use of original poster material. But as a whole, I’d say The Soft Skin properly is the worst since it rather makes you not want to watch the movie than anything. It feels quickly done, maybe starting off from a good idea but really badly executed and is in the end pretty ugly.

Best packaging :
Not a lot of special packaging to begin with but Moonrise Kingdom is certainly well done.

Most disappointing release :
Sword of Doom because nothing can explain why Criterion would waste a release slot to upgrade this with an obsolete decade old HD master just to add an audio commentary rather than releasing some fresher stuff (quality wise) instead. Watership Down follows very closely, with its now-dated master flicking everywhere, almost no new / exclusive supplement, a small booklet and a bland cover with no additional work done on it.


Best Non Criterion release :
Body Double / Carlotta (France)
Sorcerer / Wild Side (France)
Shoah + 4 films after Shoah / Masters of Cinema (UK)
Blood & Black Lace / Arrow (UK) (despite the aspect ratio debate)
The Duke of Burgundy / Artificial Eye (UK)
The Raid 2 / Wild Side (France)
The 4K FOX B&W restorations released in UK (Night & The City, Thieves’ Highway, Pickup on South Street, the Preminger movies) / BFI – Masters of Cinema – Arrow
Le cavaleur / TF1 (France)
Le désordre et la nuit / Pathé (France)
Frederick Wiseman boxset / Blaq Out (France, DVD only)

[criterionsnob]

BEST RELEASE
1. The Apu Trilogy
2. Kwaidan
3. Code Unknown
4. My Beautiful Laundrette
5. Blind Chance

BEST ECLIPSE
Agnès Varda in California

BEST MODERN FILM
Two Days, One Night

BEST COMMENTARY
N/A

BEST "BONUS" FILM
Crimes of the Future (The Brood)

BEST BOOKLET
Moonrise Kingdom

BEST ON-DISC NON-COMMENTARY EXTRA
Too many to single out just one.

BEST R1 RESCUE
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

BEST REISSUE
Kwaidan

BEST UPGRADE
My Own Private Idaho

BEST DISCOVERY
A Master Builder (I could have easily picked any of these great discoveries for me this year: The Soft Skin, Don't Look Now, Limelight, Here is Your Life, and A Day in the Country)

BEST COVER
Code Unknown

WORST COVER
Mulholland Dr. (even though the rest of the packaging is stunning)

BEST PACKAGING
Moonrise Kingdom

MOST DISAPPOINTING RELEASE
I’ll single out Dressed to Kill, but am generally disappointed in all of the various mastering/encoding issues that Criterion has been having this year.

BEST NON-CC RELEASES
Quay Brothers: Collected Short Films (Zeitgeist/Syncopy)
Carl Theodor Dreyer Collection (BFI)
Hard to Be a God (Arrow)
The Reflecting Skin (Soda)
Tenderness of the Wolves (Arrow)
Tsai Ming Liang Collection 1992-1997
The Tales of Hoffman (Studio Canal)
Kiss Me Kate (3D, Warner)
Stray Dogs (Cinema Guild)
Li'l Quinquin (Kino Lorber)
3D Rarities (Flicker Alley)

[DarkImbecile]

BEST RELEASE
1. The Apu Trilogy
2. Don't Look Now
3. Two Days, One Night
4. Odd Man Out
5. Night and the City

BEST MODERN FILM
Two Days, One Night

BEST COMMENTARY
Moonrise Kingdom (only one with a commentary I've had a chance to listen to)

BEST BOOKLET
Mulholland Dr.

BEST ON-DISC NON-COMMENTARY EXTRA
Collected Mullholland Dr. interviews

BEST REISSUE
Night and the City

BEST UPGRADE
The Friends of Eddie Coyle

BEST DISCOVERY
Night and the City

BEST COVER
1. 2. (I know it's just the poster, and I don't care) 3.

WORST COVER
1.
Maybe not the worst cover in a vacuum (though definitely in contention), but so disappointing given both the great imagery available to play with and Criterion's own previously stellar history with covers and packaging for Cronenberg's films

BEST PACKAGING
Mulholland Dr.

MOST DISAPPOINTING RELEASE
Nothing I bought this year was disappointing enough to deserve this, and I hate to judge from ignorance, but that Sword of Doom reissue sure seemed unnecessary.

BEST THREAD
I'm almost always most engaged with the forum when debating and discussing the most interesting films of the current year; in that vein, I thought the discussion around It Follows was both lively and helped enhance my own understanding of the movie.

MEMBER OF THE YEAR
colinr0380, whose write-ups I always enjoy

RICHARD CRANIUM AWARD
This isn't meant maliciously - because A) I (masochistically?) really like spirited debates around the intersection of film and society/culture and B) I hope to win this award one day - but in the spirit of past winners, I have to go with Magic Hate Ball, for this thread (and I love the new avatar, by the way)

[movielocke]

no apu as I haven't yet watched the third film:

BEST RELEASE

1. Day for Night

2. Don't Look Back

3. Odd Man Out

4. Here is Your Life

5. Silent Ozu: Three Crime Dramas


runners up (this might be one of my favorite release years ever):  silence de la mer / limelight / moonrise kingdom / room with a view / night and the city / hoop dreams / the killers / The Black Stallion


BEST ECLIPSE

Silent Ozu: Three Crime Dramas


BEST MODERN FILM

Moonrise Kingdom


BEST COMMENTARY 

ineligible


BEST "BONUS" FILM

Uncle

runner up: Daybreak Express



BEST BOOKLET 

Don’t Look Back

runner up: Silence de la Mer


BEST ON-DISC NON-COMMENTARY EXTRA

Day for Night - visual essay by filmmaker :: kogonada


This is one of the best extras I have ever seen criterion produce. kogonada breaks down the film’s editing to illustrate the carefully choreographed structural parallels that crucially reinforce the thematic explorations of cinema as well as the deliberate connections to the Soft Skin and Truffaut’s own career.


BEST REISSUE (Second Edition)

Hoop Dreams


BEST (format) UPGRADE

The Killers


BEST DISCOVERY

Odd Man Out


BEST COVER

Day for Night

runners up (in order, lots of great covers this year): Don’t Look Now, In Cold Blood, Silence de la Mer, Black Stallion, Classic Hitchcock, Kwaidan, Fellini Satyricon, Blind Chance, Valerie and her Week of Wonders, Here is Your Life, Palm Beach Story



WORST COVER

The Brood

runners up: Cries and Whispers, The Fisher King, The Soft Skin, Merchant of Four Seasons,


The Brood just is so gross to look at, I’ll never watch the movie, because of the cover (and mostly because I don’t like Cronenberg or horror)


BEST PACKAGING

Don’t Look Back


MOST DISAPPOINTING RELEASE 

Gates of Heaven / Vernon FL 


I wanted more from the extras.

RICHARD CRANIUM AWARD
TMDaines

***

(thanks to the people who clarified the commentary situation. I have no idea how you folks have an index of every commentary ever made, but it is impressive that you do.

Been a great year for kevyip pile annhilation, I've watched 140ish criterion and eclipse releases, am nearly caught up with the last sales kevyip additions, and have the overall kevyip pile down to 43 (from a high of 300ish, counted on January 1, 2014, when I resolved to do something about the pile). A kevyip here defined as a blind buy that then sat on shelf and remained unwatched for days, weeks, months, years or a decade or more. I've been afraid to tabulate the so called "lesser kevyip" of discs bought of films seen prior to purchase, but the film and disc have never been watched post purchase.

[jfish226]

BEST RELEASE
1. Don't Look Now
2. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
3. Kwaidan
4. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
5. My Beautiful Launderette

BEST ECLIPSE - Silent Ozu: Three Crime Dramas

BEST MODERN FILM - Two Days, One Night

BEST COMMENTARY - Kwaidan

BEST "BONUS" FILM - Footprints

BEST BOOKLET - Don’t Look Back

BEST ON-DISC NON-COMMENTARY EXTRA - N/A

BEST REISSUE - Kwaidan

BEST UPGRADE - An Autumn Afternoon

BEST DISCOVERY - Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

BEST COVER - Kwaidan

WORST COVER - The Soft Skin

BEST PACKAGING - Don’t Look Back

MOST DISAPPOINTING RELEASE - The Sword of Doom

[swo17]

No ties will be counted in any category, so make the hard decision if you want your vote to matter.

[domino harvey]

Movielocke, your Commentary vote isn't eligible. Swo has a list of eligible commentaries on the previous page. TK is journalism speak for "to come"

[colinr0380]

Best release 1- 5:
1. The Apu Trilogy
2. La Ciénaga
3. Code Unknown
4. A Day In The Country
5. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

It might have been a relatively quiet year in terms of new to disc releases, but I cannot complain too much about a year in which even Mulholland Drive and Don't Look Now didn't quite manage to make my top 5.

Best Eclipse:
44. Julien Duvivier In The Thirties

Best Modern Film:
Two Days, One Night

Best Commentary:
Stephen Prince on Kwaidan. I only got this disc yesterday and on planning a brief skim through the features ended up listening to the commentary all the way through into the early hours of the morning!

Best Bonus Film:
Scénario de “Save qui peut (la vie)” on Every Man For Himself (aka Slow Motion)

Best Booklet:
Mulholland Drive

Best On Disc Non-commentary extra:
Un tournage à la campagne - the 90 minute compilation of outtakes from A Day In The Country

Best Reissue:
Kwaidan - for finally catching up to the MoC edition, bettering it with a Blu-ray edition and finally adding enough extras to justify a triple dip (or quadruple if I count my old Tartan Video VHS tape of it!)

Best upgrade:
My Dinner With Andre, if just for being in the boxset with Vanya on 42nd Street and A Master Builder

Best Discovery:
Here Is Your Life (though it could just as easily have been A Special Day)

Best Cover:
La Ciénaga (but I debated between this and State of Siege, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Moonrise Kingdom, Odd Man Out, In Cold Blood, Day For Night and A Day In The Country!)

Worst Cover:
I hate to pile on but it sort of has to be The Brood, for spoiling the climax in its cover and throwing away lots of evocative art to wind up with a strangely unsatisfying end result.

Best Packaging:
Moonrise Kingdom

Most Disappointing Release:
The Brood. The new documentary and interviews were great but if ever a film would benefit from the addition of genre buffs rhapsodising over and contextualising it in a commentary track, it would probably be this one, as with Scanners if only to compensate for a lack of Cronenberg input. Something to have built on the core film and really gotten into the meat of the issues the film is raising regarding the gravitational pull of the black hole, dangerously destructive relationship between estranged fathers and mothers, frustrated and angry in equal measure, and the issues of ‘blame’ in collapsing relationships that only gets complicated once potential new lovers and wider family members start orbiting around! With all this getting capitalised on by meddling pseudo-psychiatrists with experimental techniques to pioneer, swanky clinics to fund and self-aggrandising books to write on their subjects that get picked up, probed into and eventually dropped when they have been drained of use. All while the children are trapped in a horrible situation with no room to escape.

Maybe a documentary on famous psychiatrists of our age would have been a tangential but wickedly appropriate extra contextual feature!

Member of the Year
I'm going to go for feihong this year. I had a very interesting discussion with him at the end of last year about Johnnie To's Throw Down that pushed the film upwards in my estimations, and since this time this member has been making extremely interesting reports on releases in the Japanese Films On Blu Ray thread, warnings regarding German Blu-rays of Shaw Brothers films and thought provoking comments in the P'tit Quinquin thread.

Favourite Non-Criterion Releases:

I'm going to wildly cheat with double and triple-billing my choices here, since these non-Criterion releases are not tabulated by domino! There was just too much to praise this year even with Nymph()maniac: Director's Cut just dropping off the bottom of my list and the enticing prospect of Synapse's Thundercrack! on the horizon (plus don't forget that Synapse are still releasing the Nikkatsu Roman Porno series of films with the recent edition of Sexual Assault At A Hotel. I still have my fingers crossed that Race Across The Drenched Wasteland will turn up at some point after seeing its amazing looking trailer a number of years back!). On the other hand, while I've gone for variety in my list it would have been easy enough to just fill an entire top ten list with all Arrow releases or, just as excitingly, with all Second Run releases.

1. Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism (Arrow)
2. Stray Dogs and Journey To The West (Cinema Guild)
3. Anime classics receiving their due on Blu-ray: The Wings of Honneamise (Anime Ltd in UK) and the complete series of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Animatsu, UK)
4. Germany, Pale Mother (BFI)
5. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (Arrow)
6. A Severin double: Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's The Island of Dr Moreau along with the release of Nightmare Castle plus two bonus films that works as a wonderful tribute to Barbara Steele
7. Figures in a Landscape films: Winter Sleep (New Wave), Leviathan (Artificial Eye) and Hard To Be A God (Arrow)
8. Massacre Gun & Retaliation (Arrow)
9. Second Run double: Kinetta and Story of My Death
10. A Sion Sono double: Why Don't You Play In Hell? (Cinedigm (US))/ Tokyo Tribe (Eureka (UK))
11. Polish Cinema Classics Volume III (Second Run)
12. A double bill of US Blu-ray imports of visually captivating films that were inexplicably released DVD only in the UK: Lost River (Warner) and White Bird In A Blizzard (Magnolia).

While we are at it, throw in a double bill of essential films that remain totally unreleased, even theatrically, in the UK but received Weinstein Company/Anchor Bay Blu-rays in the US months ago: Snowpiercer and The Immigrant.

[Finch]

BEST RELEASE 1. The Apu Trilogy
2. Day in The Country
3. Don't Look Back
4. A Special Day
5. Ride The Pink Horse

honourable mention goes to Valerie and her Week of Wonders

BEST ECLIPSE Julien Duvivier in The Thirties

BEST MODERN FILM Moonrise Kingdom

BEST BOOKLET Mulholland Drive
BEST REISSUE Night and the City
BEST UPGRADE An Autumn Afternoon
BEST DISCOVERY Burroughs: the Movie
BEST COVER State of Siege
WORST COVER The Brood
BEST PACKAGING Moonrise Kingdom (Mulholland Drive would have won if it hadn't been for the awful front cover)
MOST DISAPPOINTING RELEASE The Brood

MEMBER OF THE YEAR colin0380

Non-Criterion releases of the Year:

Cemetery Without Crosses (Arrow)
3 Women (Arrow)
Videodrome (Arrow)
Retaliation (Arrow)
Paper Moon (MoC) one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had this year
Duke of Burgundy (Shout Factory)
Phoenix (Soda)
The Reflecting Skin (Soda)
Pattes Blanches (Gaumont)

[Tommaso]

Actually, the only CC release I bought this year was the Apu Trilogy, so the listing is entirely for the films themselves:

BEST RELEASE
1. The Apu Trilogy
2. Mulholland Drive
3. Julien Duvivier Eclipse
4. A Day in the Country
5. Speedy

BEST ECLIPSE
Julien Duvivier

BEST COVER
A Special Day

WORST COVER
Cries and Whispers

MEMBER OF THE YEAR
colinr380

Unfortunately I didn't find the 2015 releases of other favourite labels too exciting, either. Not even Edition Filmmuseum came up with something really new in the silent department (though their Eisenstein and Vertov releases deserve praise, of course), as Noa's "Helena" will only hit the normal shops early next year.

Best non-Criterion releases of the year:

Assunta Spina (Francesa Bertini & Gustavo Serena, Cineteca Bologna)
Okay, this one really had the 'wow' factor. Completely indispensable for any silent film fan...

Yoshida: Love + Anarchism (Arrow)

Hard to be a God (German, Arrow)


Worst release of the year:

Varieté (Dupont, Murnau-Stiftung): one of the truly great Weimar era films destroyed by what must be the worst 'soundtrack' ever put on any release of a silent film. And they're even proud of it. If Criterion have no idea which film they can rescue in 2016 (R1 or not), here's the prime candidate.

[artfilmfan]

Best Release:

1. A Day in the Country (It's been a long wait for a Criterion release, but it's totally worth it. It's the only film I've ever written to Criterion to inquire about their plan on releasing it. Thank you, Criterion!)
2. The Apu Trilogy
3. Blind Chance
4. A Special Day
5. Julien Duvivier in the Thirties

Best Re-Issue:

Hiroshima mon amour

Best Non-Criterion Release:

Late Spring (Shochiku)

[domino harvey]

Since I failed to mention it in the first post, voting is open until January 15th. You may edit your posts/votes up to the last week of voting. I will make a post when no more edits will be allowed.

Also, any interest in a Worst Supplement Award? Or should we just call it the ::kogonada:: Award and be done with it?

[EddieLarkin]

BEST RELEASE

Ride the Pink Horse
Every Man for Himself
Hiroshima mon amour
The Palm Beach Story
The Black Stallion

BEST ECLIPSE

Julien Duvivier in the Thirties

BEST MODERN FILM

Moonrise Kingdom

BEST REISSUE

Hiroshima mon amour

BEST UPGRADE

An Autumn Afternoon

BEST DISCOVERY

Ride the Pink Horse

BEST COVER

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

WORST COVER

Cries and Whispers

BEST PACKAGING

Mulholland Drive

MOST DISAPPOINTING RELEASE

Make Way for Tomorrow

MEMBER OF THE YEAR

colinr0380

RICHARD CRANIUM AWARD

EricJ

[FrauBlucher]

BEST RELEASES
1- The Apu Trilogy
2- Don't Look Back
3- Code Unknown
4- Mulholland Drive
5- La Cienaga

BEST ECLIPSE
Julien Duvivier in the Thirties

MODERN FILM
Moonrise Kingdom

BEST REISSUE
Cries and Whispers

BEST UPGRADE
Ikiru

BONUS FILM
Speedy - Bumping into Broadway

BEST BOOKLET
Mulholland Drive

BEST DISCOVERY
La Cienaga

BEST COVER
Ride the Pink Horse

WORST COVER
The Fisher King

BEST PACKAGING
Dont Look Back

[teddyleevin]

BEST RELEASE
1. The Fisher King
2. Day for Night
3. The Apu Trilogy
4. Moonrise Kingdom
5. The Brood

BEST ECLIPSE
Julien Duvivier

BEST MODERN FILM
Moonrise Kingdom

BEST COMMENTARY
Moonrise Kingdom

BEST "BONUS" FILM
The Brood - Crimes of the Future

BEST BOOKLET
Moonrise Kingdom

BEST ON-DISC NON-COMMENTARY EXTRA
Fisher King Robin Williams interview

BEST REISSUE
The Sword of Doom

BEST UPGRADE
Ikiru

BEST DISCOVERY
Vernon, Florida

BEST COVER
Day for Night

WORST COVER
The Palm Beach Story

BEST PACKAGING
Moonrise Kingdom

MOST DISAPPOINTING RELEASE
Mulholland Drive

BEST THREAD
My Bad YouTube Collector Vids Collection

MEMBER OF THE YEAR
colin0380

RICHARD CRANIUM AWARD "It took me an embarrassing number of years to get the wordplay inherent here. Once you figure it out for yourself, you'll know what kind of poster deserves to be damned with this designation."
Now I feel like I'm missing the joke after all these years so I vote for myself.

[MichaelB]

I've barely seen any new Criterion releases this year, but I'm very happy to bung Colin0380 another Member of the Year vote.

[domino harvey]

Gotta at least vote for the Top 5 in order for that vote to count, MichaelB

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Best Release
741 My Winnipeg
746 A Day in the Country
781 In Cold Blood
786 Don't Look Back
789 Burroughs: the Movie

Best Eclipse
Duvivier in the Thirties

Reissue
274 Night and the City

Bonus
In Cold Blood

Upgrade
Autumn Afternoon

[swo17]

Are we supposed to be voting for best bonus film or release with the best bonus film(s)?

[domino harvey]

Best bonus film itself

[MichaelB]

Gotta at least vote for the Top 5 in order for that vote to count, MichaelB

In that case, sorry Colin - I haven't even seen five!